Data Centers
Resilience at the nexus of water, cooling, infrastructure and community
The future of computing depends on more than power and processing capacity. As AI and high-density computing drive unprecedented infrastructure growth, resilient water and cooling systems have become critical to operational performance, efficiency, and long-term scalability.
Data center operators must balance increasing cooling demands with water availability, resource efficiency, uptime requirements, and community expectations. Xylem helps address these challenges through integrated water and cooling solutions that support resilient operations, optimize resources, and enable sustainable growth at scale.
Why infrastructure strategy matters for AI data centers
Data center growth now depends on more than compute capacity, available land, and power infrastructure. As AI workloads increase cooling demands, operators must determine how to scale reliably while managing water availability, operational resilience, regulatory requirements, and community expectations.
Water and cooling infrastructure have become critical enablers of data center performance. Decisions about water sourcing, treatment, reuse, cooling-loop design, filtration, wastewater and system reliability influence uptime, efficiency, permitting, scalability, and long-term operating risk. Increasingly, these considerations are shaping where and how new data centers are built.
As the industry adopts liquid cooling, hybrid cooling, and other high-density thermal management approaches, water can no longer be treated as a standalone utility. Cooling systems, water quality, treatment processes, distribution networks, and facility infrastructure must be planned together from the earliest stages of site selection and design through operations and expansion.
Xylem helps data center owners, operators, managers, design firms, Engineering-Procurement-Construction firms (EPCs), and General contractors take a comprehensive approach to water and cooling strategy, connecting facility performance with the broader infrastructure systems that support long-term growth, operational resilience, and community stewardship. We partner from design and build through commissioning, start up to operation, monitoring and long term performance.
Four priorities for scaling resilient infrastructure strategy
- Design for Scale: Integrate cooling, water, and fluid-management infrastructure into facility planning from the outset to support future capacity growth, operational reliability, and evolving AI workloads.
- Optimize Resources: Improve water efficiency, enable reuse where appropriate, and maintain water quality to support system performance while reducing dependence on constrained local resources.
- Strengthen Infrastructure Partnerships: Coordinate early with utilities, municipalities, and local stakeholders to align data center expansion with regional infrastructure realities and long-term resource planning.
- Build Long-Term Resilience: Develop strategies that support reliable operations through changing environmental, regulatory, and community conditions while enabling sustainable growth.
How Xylem helps
Xylem brings the expertise for the full lifecycle of data center growth from planning and system design to treatment, reuse, monitoring, operations, and utility coordination, Xylem helps customers manage water and cooling as mission-critical infrastructure. Whether supporting hyperscale data centers, colocation facilities, or emerging AI factories, we help make digital growth more reliable, efficient, and responsible.
What makes Xylem different
As cooling architectures evolve, performance depends on more than thermal management alone. Water sourcing, treatment, quality, transport, reuse, monitoring, and discharge all influence operational reliability and long-term scalability. Xylem brings expertise across the broader water cycle, helping customers optimize both cooling performance and the infrastructure that supports it.
Connecting infrastructure systems
Data center performance is shaped by the interaction between cooling systems, water systems, facility operations, utilities, and local resources. Xylem takes a systems-based approach that helps customers balance uptime, efficiency, resilience, and sustainability across the full data center environment.
From planning to long-term operations
Infrastructure decisions made during site selection and design can impact performance for decades. Xylem supports customers throughout the asset lifecycle, from planning and commissioning to ongoing operations, optimization, maintenance, and expansion.
Built for the future of AI infrastructure
The transition to liquid cooling and higher-density computing is reshaping how data centers are designed and operated. Xylem helps customers plan and manage the cooling, water, and fluid-management infrastructure needed to support next-generation AI workloads while maintaining reliability and operational flexibility.
Global capabilities, local understanding
Every data center operates within a unique regulatory, resource, and community context. Xylem combines global technology, engineering, and service expertise with local knowledge to help customers navigate permitting, resource availability, infrastructure constraints, and community expectations.
Case studies
No margin for downtime: Redundant cooling water treatment for a hyperscale data center
Learn how Xylem delivered redundant cooling water treatment for a Virginia hyperscale campus — supporting uptime, environmental compliance, and fast deployment.
High performance data center reduces cooling risk with phased water treatment strategy
Explore how Xylem helped a high performance data center reduce cooling risk and enable rapid startup with a phased water treatment strategy and permanent solution.
FAQs for data center customers
Direct-to-chip cooling is a liquid cooling approach that removes heat directly from processors rather than relying solely on traditional air cooling. As AI workloads increase thermal density, data centers are adopting direct-to-chip, liquid, and hybrid cooling architectures to support higher-performance computing. These systems require well-designed fluid-management, hydronic, and water infrastructure to maintain cooling performance, reliability, and operational efficiency.
Liquid cooling systems help manage the higher thermal loads associated with AI and high-density computing environments. These systems rely on cooling loops, hydronic infrastructure, fluid handling, water-quality management, treatment, and monitoring capabilities that work together to support reliable and efficient operations. As liquid cooling adoption grows, cooling infrastructure is increasingly planned alongside compute, power, and facility design.
Data center cooling loops can include pumps, motors, heat exchangers, tanks, valves, cooling distribution units (CDUs), monitoring systems, and other applied-water and hydronic infrastructure used to move and manage cooling fluids throughout the facility. Xylem also works with cooling OEMs, engineering firms, and data center operators to support cooling-system design, installation, operation, and long-term performance.
Data centers rely on a range of water sources, including municipal, groundwater, surface water, and reclaimed water, each with unique quality and treatment requirements. Water quality directly affects cooling system efficiency, heat-transfer performance, equipment reliability, maintenance requirements, and long-term operational continuity.
Xylem helps customers evaluate, treat, monitor, and manage source water to meet cooling system requirements. Our solutions support intake-water treatment, filtration, water-quality monitoring, cooling-loop management, and ongoing system optimization, helping data centers maintain reliable cooling performance while supporting efficient and resilient operations.
Data centers can reduce water use by combining more efficient cooling architectures with reuse, recovery, recirculation, and broader water planning. The source material notes that closed-loop liquid cooling can reduce water use by 80–90%, and that the sector could become 46% more water-efficient by 2050, with potential savings of 2.4 trillion liters annually.
Monitoring helps operators measure flow, pressure, level, temperature-related performance, and water quality so they can identify issues earlier and improve system decision-making over time. Xylem supports this through sensing, analytics, Xylem Vue, and integration with BMS and DCIM environments.
Yes. Xylem supports the cooling-loop and hydronic infrastructure inside the facility while also helping customers address sourcing, treatment, transport, measurement, monitoring, reuse, discharge, and long-term planning across the broader site and community water context.
Because the shift to liquid and hybrid cooling is part of a wider infrastructure redesign. Cooling loops, water systems, and fluid infrastructure should be planned alongside compute, power, and overall facility architecture from the outset to support better performance, resilience, and long-term scalability.
As data centers adopt liquid, hybrid, and direct-to-chip cooling technologies, maintaining fluid quality, flow, temperature, and overall system performance becomes increasingly important. Xylem helps customers move, manage, treat, monitor, and optimize cooling fluids across the cooling loop, helping protect thermal performance, improve operational efficiency, reduce risk, and support reliable up time as cooling demands become more complex.
As data centers scale to support AI and high-density computing, many operators are looking to reduce dependence on freshwater supplies while maintaining cooling performance, operational reliability, and long-term resilience.
Xylem helps customers develop application-specific water strategies that can include wastewater treatment, water recycling, reuse, recirculation, and water-quality management. By aligning water treatment and reuse solutions with cooling-system requirements and operational goals, data centers can improve resource efficiency, strengthen resilience, and support sustainable growth.
Reliable cooling and water infrastructure depends on understanding system performance in real time. Monitoring and analytics help operators identify issues earlier, optimize performance, reduce operational risk, and make more informed infrastructure decisions.
Xylem's sensing, monitoring, analytics, and control solutions provide greater visibility into water and cooling-system performance. These capabilities help operators monitor conditions, improve efficiency, support uptime, and manage increasingly complex cooling and water infrastructure with confidence.
Long-term data center growth depends on more than the infrastructure inside the facility. Water availability, wastewater capacity, utility readiness, permitting considerations, and community priorities can all influence where and how data centers expand.
Xylem works with data center operators, utilities, municipalities, and industrial stakeholders to strengthen water and wastewater infrastructure, improve system reliability, and support growth that aligns with local resource realities and community needs. This broader infrastructure perspective helps customers plan for long-term scalability while building community confidence and operational resilience.